Time To Keep It Simple serves as a record of my life as a traveler, writer, genealogist, photographer, target sports enthusiast, Rotarian, Mason, Jew, PR professional, and many other (mostly positive) things. In addition to this daily blog I am also the man behind the curtain (not named Oz) at gettingyourphil.blogspot.com and I previously blogged at fromgoytooleh.blogspot.com.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Firearms Friday: Here We Go Again

Another
tragedy, another barbarous act, another opportunity for politicians to further
their agenda. As has been the case many times over in recent years, in the wake
of a murderous rampage by a deranged individual, the President took advantage of the situation and promoted his gun control agenda.
And it was not a side note buried in a mountain of words, it was front and
center, prominently on display… opinion inserted into the limited facts known
by officials at the time.

“I’ve had to make statements like
this too many times. Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like
this too many times. We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once
again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to
inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun. But let’s be clear:
At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type
of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen
in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do
something about it.”

While
heinous events such as the one in Charleston are leveraged for the sake of naïve
political ideology, the facts at the end of the day are quite simple. This was
a mass killing by a disturbed individual who, given his previous indictment,
was illegally in the possession of a firearm. While there are various theories
as to how he obtained it, if he was aided in acquiring that weapon in any way,
those individuals should be held responsible for their actions in assisting in
the perpetration of the crime.

Criminals
will always find a way to carry out their evil acts. No amount of regulation or
control will ever stop this from happening. As President Reagan wrote in 1983 (after the attempted assassination by
Hinkley two years prior), “It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict
harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal
experience.” If you believe otherwise you are delusional in your
utopian thoughts.

Of course,
this is coming from a former President who was also an NRA member. Furthermore,
he was known to have carried a revolver on at least several instances while in
office as was recently noted by Brad Meltzer and previously reported by Ron Kessler in his book “In the President`s Secret
Service”, However, lets look more closely at the beliefs held by those who
appose the Second Amendment. While this article is nearly 40 years old now,
it still holds true today. Here is an excerpt from an article published by then Governor Reagan in the September 1975 issue of Guns & Ammo:

“There are those in America today who have come to
depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails
they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more
power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the
means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the
expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up
their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection
from what has always been the chief source of despotism--government.”

The
issues in this country are not in the rights that have been granted to the
citizenry, the problems are in the individuals. This includes those who refuse
to accept others as equals, those who don’t respect that sanctity of human
life, and those who fail to fear the overindulgence of power. These issue are
not the burden of law abiding citizens who believe in self-sufficiency and personal
responsibility. This is not a time to strip people of their rights (especially while
there are attempts to expand the rights of others). One person committed this
act (potentially with the assistance of others) and that person / those people
are the ones who should burn for this!